Expo 2015 Wine Pavilion to offer multimedia excellence

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Rome, July 28 - Italy's dazzling Wine Pavilion at the 2015 Expo will offer a constellation of attractions for connoisseurs and tipplers including tastings, wine-sniffing games for adults and a multimedia display on the history of grape pressing on the peninsula, organizers said.

"The Wine Pavilion is not a business area, though wine-producing firms can be present," Agriculture Minister Maurizio Martina explained. "We will recount the whole Italian wine-producing experience, its history, its present and its future".

"It is a way to show what Italy can be in the world when it leverages its key assets, and wine is one of them".

Visitors to the 2000-square-meter pavilion, sponsored by the agriculture ministry and organizers of the annual Vinitaly trade fair in Verona, will encounter a multimedia display and a tasting extravaganza in its Wine Library bar and restaurant.

A multimedia show at the pavilion entrance will create "an emotional experience through images of the top wine-producing regions and the phases of wine-making," said architect Italo Rota. These will include installations generating virtual and actual experiences allowing visitors to enjoy the perfumes of wine, he said. There also will be a web cellar for purchases, a business area, a terrace where wine tasting master classes will be held, and a VIP lounge.

All the multimedia tools used for the pavilion will be re-used in other major wine events, according to Giovanni Mantovani, director of Veronafiere and a member of the scientific committee for the Wine Pavilion appointed by the agriculture minister and headed by world-renowned enologist Riccardo Cotarella.

"We have worked hard, not only to create a beautiful showcase but also to fill it with content," Veronafiere Chairman Ettore Riello said. "Our vineyards are an incomparable and priceless heritage," Cotarella enthused. "Italy is a garden flourishing with vines, and we owe it all to our young people". Diana Bracco, president of Expo 2015 and commissar for the Italy Pavilion, stressed that wine is one of Italy's areas of excellence and an example of Italian ingeniousness in producing delicious, award-winning and internationally sought-after wines despite sometimes difficult terrain on the mountainous peninsula.

Italy's pavilion also celebrates wine "as part of the relationship between the land and humankind," Bracco concluded.